An Open Letter to Google and Apple: Stop Hindering Iranian Entrepreneurs
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Re: An Open Letter to Google and Apple: Stop Hindering Iranian Entrepreneurs
#2There are lots of ways to provide free access to information to everyone. How do you expect other people to grow without giving them enough information to understand?
Peace depends on the freedom
Re: An Open Letter to Google and Apple: Stop Hindering Iranian Entrepreneurs
#3I sincerely hope that the ongoing trade and business war will lead to nice new competitors to Android and iOS. The more countries they ban the higher the chances.
Re: An Open Letter to Google and Apple: Stop Hindering Iranian Entrepreneurs
#4Maybe i'm bitter, or old, but my exclusion from a service is #1 reason to stay away from patronizing it.
It's my opinion that the excluded, Iranians in the case of this article, should be having hard discussions about how they could get away from the likes of Google and Apple, not talks about how to integrate into an ecosystem that appears hostile.
I understand the difficulty of that in practice, but integrating into a group that makes hostile world-changing decisions about groups of people based on geography and cultural differences seems to just empower that group further the next time they try to inject political maneuvering into their business -- making them an even larger threat to those it disagrees with in the future.
In other words : Second verse, same as the first -- vote with your dollar, vote with your participation.
Re: An Open Letter to Google and Apple: Stop Hindering Iranian Entrepreneurs
#5Maybe i'm bitter, or old, but my exclusion from a service is #1 reason to stay away from patronizing it. It's my opinion that the excluded, Iranians in the case of this article, should be having hard discussions about how they could get away from the likes of Google and Apple, not talks about how to integrate into an ecosystem that appears hostile. I understand the difficulty of that in practice, but integrating into…
That's another part of the story. That part is going on, struggling with its problems, especially with the Apple ecosystem.
On the other side, there are conservatives in Iran too, that will be happy to be disconnected from the world. Taking effective steps from Google and Apple side can strengthen the peace dialogue for both sides.
Re: An Open Letter to Google and Apple: Stop Hindering Iranian Entrepreneurs
#6Whilst I understand where the author is coming from, I'm not sure the companies are to blame here.
> Two years ago, under the guise of complying with American sanctions against Iran — sanctions that have existed for decades — Apple started removing Iranian apps from its platform.
Sanctions aren't always clear-cut, and if a buck is to be made, companies often try to stretch interpretations, try to fly under the radar or rely on the administration on being lenient in some aspects. So I'm not sure it's as simple as "sanctions existed before, so this must be the companies fault".
I'd much rather see sanctions in this space limited/removed - but I hold no hopes for enabling moves in this geopolitical game of power.
Re: An Open Letter to Google and Apple: Stop Hindering Iranian Entrepreneurs
#7The article mentions the kind of dependency on the Android and iOS platforms. I believe this is the right time for Iranian entrepreneurs to start porting or start installing Google free Android as a service on customers’ phones and then have their apps running on them. Some of the smarter ones can even exploit the political scene and say they’re giving a big middle finger to Western companies in favour of something they built locally. I’m assuming that the local politicians are at best indifferent to these measures.
Re: An Open Letter to Google and Apple: Stop Hindering Iranian Entrepreneurs
#8I'll note again the snowball effect that the Google Cloud block has (Google Cloud totally blocks Iran on a network level).
Now, your services that you host on Google Cloud are not available. Say you are Gitlab, and you host there (they do!). Now, if you put your Open Source project on Gitlab, that project is not accessible to Iranians either (as well as other sanctioned countries).
As someone you spends a couple of weeks every year in Iran, I can tell you that arbitrary websites breaking because of blocks on the US side have a far worse effect on my ability to work then the fact that Facebook and Twitter is blocked.
Why doesn't the documentation for date-fns work? Oh, they load the data from Firebase.
Why can't I compile by Android app? Oh, the Android repository is hosted on Google Cloud.
Etc.
Re: An Open Letter to Google and Apple: Stop Hindering Iranian Entrepreneurs
#9It's not even about being in Iran, you can be anywhere and they will hunt you down and will try everything in their power to make you suffer more.
I've written about my own experience at https://alireza.gonevis.com/how-i-didnt-get-my-first-paying-...
Re: An Open Letter to Google and Apple: Stop Hindering Iranian Entrepreneurs
#10There are alternative app stores available, for example: https://code.tutsplus.com/articles/10-alternative-android-ap...
Does anyone know enough about the legal angle to talk about what it would take to develop an alternative platform not impacted by US sanctions?